‘For Your Infotainment’ Celebrates ‘Outliers’

Taking its name from the words printed on Feature Inc.’s compliments slip, For Your Infotainment celebrates the maverick spirit and enduring legacy of the late art dealer Hudson (1950-2014) and his Chicago- and New York-based gallery Feature Inc. Further to the announcement in January, full details of this—the first themed section at Frieze New York—have been announced.

Curated by Matthew Higgs (White Columns, New York), For Your Infotainment: Hudson and Feature Inc. showcases major artists who received their gallery debuts or had a long history at Hudson’s seminal space Feature Inc. in the 1980s, ‘90s and early 2000s—a group which, Higgs says, comprises “artists of often quite radically different intentions, that somehow all made (perfect) sense when viewed through Hudson’s eyes.” The presentations in For Your Infotainment include:

Dike Blair (Karma, New York)

Tom of Finland (David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles)

Jason Fox and Daniel Hesidence (Canada, New York)

Tom Friedman (Stephen Friedman Gallery, London)

Andrew Masullo (Nicelle Beauchene, New York)

Raymond Pettibon (David Zwirner, New York)

Takashi Murakami (Gagosian, New York)

and Tony Tasset (Kavi Gupta, Chicago)

A booth representing the recently launched non-profit Feature Hudson Foundation (FHF) will also be a highlight of the section, with a display curated by Higgs and showcasing another 15 artists, including Lisa Beck, Richard Kern, Roy McMakin, Kay Rosen, Nancy Shaver, Lily van der Stokker, among others. (The Feature Hudson Foundation booth is realized with the generous support of UOVO).

“The artists who exhibited at Feature Inc. were, and remain, to use Lynne Cooke’s poignant term ‘outliers’: artists who are hard to pigeon-hole and whose work actively resists easy categorization,” Higgs notes, calling the late dealer’s 30 year career “nothing short of miraculous.”

Frieze’s Loring Randolph recalls: “When I first came to New York, Feature Inc. was one of the galleries that stood out for me and I remember when Hudson mounted the “Power to the People” exhibition – it felt really radical compared to what was happening in Chelsea. I think it is really special to have a moment in the fair where galleries pay homage to a colleague, and I could not have imagined a better curator and person than Matthew Higgs to represent the Hudson ethos.”

Image above: Tom of Finland, Untitled (Preparatory Drawing), 1989. Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 

Frieze New York takes place May 3—6.